Links to Start Your Week 9/8/13

Later this week there will be an intense piece on Syria, so I’m going to actually try to use this post to bring attention to some other stories going on around the world lately.

This one is somewhat Syria-related, but a different angle than most places have been covering. As the conflict intensifies, more refugees and asylum seekers are fleeing Syria. 700 migrants, including Syrian refugees, and other migrants from Egypt, Eritrea, Nigeria, and Ghana, were rescued off coast of Italy after their vessels encountered difficulty.

You are probably very familiar with America’s obesity problem. However, you might not be aware of how our economic and agricultural policies might be causing obesity to become one of our biggest exports.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its latest report on instances of recidivism among detainees who have been transferred out of the Guantanamo Bay Prison. As of July of this year, that rate was determined to be 16.6%.

While most of the news right now in the U.S. is focused on Syria, and we are supposedly enacting a pivot to Asia, the extent of U.S. military operations in Africa is ever-expanding (despite a public stance that we are maintaining a “small footprint” on the continent.)

In U.S. national security news, a former FBI lawyer linked to extensive surveillance abuses by the agency is now being considered for a position as a federal judge on a court dealing with terrorism cases. So that seems entirely unproblematic.